Devon drills an ‘ideaWELL’

Sunday

Jan 20, 2019 at 12:01 AM

OKLAHOMA CITY (TNS) — While Devon’s “ideaWELL” doesn’t produce oil or natural gas, the company hopes it has created something that still is a gusher.

The project, which aims to generate great ideas, was discussed by the firm’s strategic innovation leader, Todd Blasdel, at a recent Oklahoma Venture Forum event. Officials said the project was created in October by Devon’s Innovation Action Council.

Essentially, ideaWELL functions as sort of a 21st century equivalent of an ideas box Devon uses to look for innovative solutions that would address operational, organizational and financial challenges it faces on a routine basis.

Devon designed it as an internal social media platform, giving employees a place to ask questions about a particular challenge they might be working on as part of their jobs or to offer up good ideas.

Chances are, someone else in the company has worked his or her way through a similar issue, either at Devon or somewhere else and is able through ideaWELL to offer up helpful suggestions.

“We are looking more at how innovation happens within a big company,” Blasdel told forum participants, when discussing the program.

Blasdel said Devon, like many of its peers, tries to keep an eye on emerging oil and gas technologies that might help it better conduct its business.

He said Devon sets up a booth at many oil and gas related conventions, noting it attracts other firms that develop and deploy that technology into creating relationships with the Oklahoma City-based firm.

He noted Devon also works closely with the BHGE Energy Innovation Center of North America in Oklahoma City, and that it also is part of a technology-based investor group in Denver that’s always in the hunt to find investment opportunities in startups that are developing innovative technology and ideas.

“But, we also want to promote innovation inside the building,” Blasdel told the 40 guests who attended the venture forum event, explaining why the company started the program.

Officials said Devon finds ideaWELL a useful tool to seek ideas on a specific issue it would like to see be addressed.

Under the leadership of Wade Hutchings, a senior vice president at Devon, the innovation council used ideaWELL to submit a challenge to its employees to help it find new revenue streams.

It gave employees about a month, and the 800 employees who joined the platform submitted 73 ideas that received more than 200 comments.

Blasdel and his team evaluated submissions to select finalists that were presented to the council.

The ultimate winner of that challenge, he said, was an idea submitted by an engineer and a petroleum marketing professional who had proposed some technological upgrades to Devon’s production equipment that aims to capture more oil, the highest-value product from a well’s production stream.

Blasdel said Devon gave the winners a cash award, and said he looks forward to other ideas that could come from the well in the future.

He also noted ideaWELL is a useful tool because it gives employees a place where they can come together to discuss challenges and opportunities and track how they are resolved, over time.

“What we have now is a purpose-built, corporate innovation platform so that any employee who has a new idea can come in, submit it, support it with white papers or videos, and other employees can like it, comment on it, or tag other experts inviting them to submit their comments or ideas,” Blasdel said.

“This is where they can go.”

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